Posted by OP Sequence
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OP: 「Winding Road」by MAN WITH A MISSION
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「のっぺら坊」 (Nopparebou)
“Nopparebo”
On this week’s Shokugeki no Souma: raw squirrel brains! *insert foodgasm here*
I’m not actually too grossed out by the consumption of brains, more by the idea of eating them raw. Brains are basically just fatty tofu, good stewed, barbecued, or deep-fried. But raw? I know it’s traditional Ainu cuisine and I want to respect the culture, but I’m also wary of tricky prion diseases. Cooking with fire is one of humanity’s greatest inventions. Cooked food takes less energy to digest and the heat kills parasites. Also, barbecue smells great. Is it so bad to want your meat at least medium rare? That said, I have also enjoyed sashimi of all kinds (horse sashimi? Tastes like kangaroo) so maybe squirrel brain sashimi is par for the course. And perhaps squirrels back in the day were just… cleaner? Maybe someone who has been to Hokkaido can tell us first-hand if their squirrels are good eating.
And no matter what they do to squirrels this episode, at least it wasn’t a bear.
It’s actually surprising how much time this episode spent on Ainu cuisine considering how brisk the pace is. We meet two more of the tattooed prisoners this week, one is summarily dispatched, and the other gets away. I certainly won’t mind if they slowed down a tad, but ff there really are 24 of these guys then this pace is probably necessary. It does makes Golden Kamuy a very busy anime every episod, though. And this is before factoring in all the other factions out for Ainu gold, including the army (and this scary guy) and the original thief himself (i.e. this scary guy). I’m glad that they’re taking the time to let Asirpa explain her way of life, because Sugimoto does seem to be the kind of guy who would benefit from some culture. I’ve been hoping that Asirpa would be a positive influence on Sugimoto, and for the time being it seems that she is. Simply sketching the tattoos is certainly less bloodthirsty than killing and skinning a human being, but it’s also less expedient. Paper costs money, and killing removes potential threats and leaves a larger share of the gold for those who are still alive. If Immortal Gugimoto wanted to maximise survival, it’d be prudent to remove the competition. But Asirpa shows that there may be more to life than expedience and survival. Both she and Sugimoto profess to enjoying squirrel meat, but for Sugimoto they were probably just a source of protein. For Asirpa, every meal has spiritual significance. And hey, good things come when we take a roundabout path. Nothing useful could be extracted from Prisoner #3 by threats alone, but all it took was a a bonding moment (through force of circumstances, but still) for him to be completely cooperative.
Overall, though, Golden Kamuy is still an uncomplicated adventure and there’s not too much need to think about it too hard. I imagine that it’s still putting its pieces one the board right now and come episode 03 big things will start happening, I’m willing to be patient. I imagine that at some point I’ll be sick of snow and trees and will wish for a change of setting, but for now Golden Kamuy has been working well as straightforward entertainment and I think it should be fine just doing its thing. One conflict for me, though: I really want to respect Asirpa as a proud Ainu hunter, but at the same time she’s just the most adorable thing. Ah, dilemma.
Full-length images: ED 02, ED 03.
ED Sequence
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ED: 「Hibana」by THE SIXTH LIE
An Tip from me because of the last Episode CGI Bear. The Director should watch “Etotama” and see for themselves if they find the CGI and Hand-drawn textures
an Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWtk07FHVBk
or the latest one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_the_Lustrous
Good Luck for the future
myself are more an “Fanboy” that animated “Knights of Sidonia” and “BLAME”. But even they had some CGI’s that was not looking good (Ronja)
Sorry, this is the right Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDtbQXMK4gw
and this Link, too: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/?s=lustrous
Well, there is a reason why the Ainu may prefer to eat it raw: uncooked meat is more nutritious AFAIK. If you are a hunter-gatherer society and the food is sparse, eating it raw may be a better idea.
Not sure about the Ainu, but one reason many American Indian tribes often ate meat raw was (A) the preparation took time and sometimes the camp couldn’t move close enough to the quarry and (B) The fire would attract competing tribes vying to steal the spoils.
Also, this pacing isn’t too bad based from reading the manga. Its funny to see the food scenes animated though <3
I haven’t read the manga, so I can’t really compare it to that. But I don’t feel the anime is going too fast to be a significant problem, I’m just making a note of the speed.
Not sure how I feel about goddamn Hijikata of the Shinesengumi being one of the three forces vying for the gold. I guess they wanted a little star power mixed in, and I’m sure he’ll make for a scary villain, but it’s just kind of weird. Like, the sides are: a soldier and an Ainu girl, an army battalion, and then HIJIKATA TOSHIROU.
Maybe he has a motive other than pure greed. Sugimoto is after the gold for his friend’s wife, after all, so others may need the gold for whatever reason as well.
Two minor nitpicks:
1. While I agree with cooking being great invention, afaik no prion disease of rodents are known, chance of transmission for prion diseases are generally very low, and most importantly prions are notoriously resistant to heating, so unless you can put squirrel brain into autoclave for half an hour cooking it wouldn’t help anyway.
2. Isn’t the second scary guy (the samurai one) a leader of escaped prisoners rather than original thief (“Noppera-bo”)?
2. That would make more sense. I think I may have conflated ‘leader of the prisoners’ and ‘original thief guy’ at some point.
@Nayrael, even though it may have more nutrition, raw meat carries the risks of bacterial/viral food poisoning and parasitism. The spread of meat cooking by humans and their ancestors from maybe occasionally 2 million years ago to regularly a quarter of a million years ago suggests that cooking meat gives a community more advantage than eating it raw.
@puppygod, current thinking apparently suggests you’d need 90 minutes in the autoclave to destroy prions.
Might depend on the autoclave. The media we use in microbiology lab needs to be autoclaved for 15min, as per packaging instructions, but if we ran that time in our machine the media is not sterilized and a run time of 30min minimum is needed to get the job done.
Today, Otaru’s also a popular tourist destination in Hokkaido.
https://www.tripadvisor.com.my/Attractions-g298153-Activities-c47-Otaru_Hokkaido.html
It’s particularly famous for a 1923 canal and old brick warehouses lining the waterway.
https://hokkaido-labo.com/en/otaru-canal-438
Otaru is (or at least, should be) famous for Saikano.
A reminder that Kamuy will only have 12 eps.
The manga is still ongoing, so I don’t expect this to be a complete adaptation.
I don’t really expect it to be. These kind of adventure stories can go on almost forever.
I’m enjoying it so far, but the animation is pretty lackluster and subpar imo (at least no CGI bear this time). Just hope it’ll improve to at least Kokkoku quality (which while not amazing, was passable).
we are not talk about bad drawings and awkward animation?
there is still the 3 episode and in some special cas 5 episode protection rule
Also not every anime needs top notch animation or drawings, as long they can compensate it with great story and such.. like in the young past with these 2 girls and her “kettenrad”
That actually goes against everything I know about nutrition, cooked food and vegan diet…well, human stomach is designed to digest cooked food – cooking food actually helps break down the protein so they can be digested/absorbed easier, so cooked food is actually more nutritious.